Many many years ago, John Milton made similar arguments regarding the censorship of blasphemous speech and bad doctrine.

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The Freedom to be an Idiot

"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended." ~ George W. Bush, September 11, 2001

We have heard it repeated loudly and continuously since 9/11 – the troops are defending our freedoms. This claim is made so often and by so many different segments of society that it has become another meaningless national dictum – like "God Bless America" or "In God We Trust."

This cliché is actually quite insidious. It is used as a mantra to justify or excuse anything the U.S. military does.

U.S. troops are engaged in unconstitutional, undeclared wars – but the troops are defending our freedoms. U.S. drone strikes killed civilians in Pakistan – but the troops are defending our freedoms. U.S. bombs landed on a wedding party in Afghanistan – but the troops are defending our freedoms. U.S. soldiers murdered Afghan civilians and kept some of their body parts – but the troops are defending our freedoms. U.S. helicopter pilots gunned down Iraqi civilians – but the troops are defending our freedoms. U.S. soldiers killed civilians for sport – but the troops are defending our freedoms. U.S. troops carelessly killed civilians and then covered it up – but the troops are defending our freedoms.

But as I have pointed out many times in my articles on the military, and others like Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation have been arguing for years (see here and here), the troops are doing everything but defending our freedoms. In fact, the more the troops defend our freedoms by bombing, invading, and occupying other countries, the more enemies they make of the United States and the more our freedoms get taken away in the name of "fighting terrorism" or "national security."

Not in any particular order, and in varying degrees of significance, here are some freedoms I wish the military were defending:

• The freedom to fly without being sexually violated.
• The freedom to purchase a gun without a waiting period.
• The freedom to grow, sell, and smoke marijuana.
• The freedom to sell goods and services for whatever amount a buyer is willing to pay.
• The freedom to make more than six withdrawals from one’s savings account each month.
• The freedom to drink alcohol as a legal, voting adult under twenty-one years of age.
• The freedom to purchase Sudafed over the counter.
• The freedom to gamble without government approval.
• The freedom to deposit more than $10,000 in a bank account without government scrutiny.
• The freedom to not be stopped at a checkpoint and have one’s car searched without a warrant.
• The freedom to sell any good or offer any service on Craigslist.
• The freedom to fill in a "wetland" on one’s own property.
• The freedom to cut someone’s hair for money without a license.
• The freedom to home-brew over 100 gallons of beer per year.
• The freedom to advertise tobacco products on television.
• The freedom to smoke Cuban cigars.
• The freedom to not wear a seatbelt.
• The freedom to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
• The freedom to keep the fruits of one’s labor.
• The freedom of an employer and an employee to negotiate for any wage.
• The freedom to discriminate against anyone for any reason.
• The freedom to videotape the police in public.
• The freedom of businesses to hire and fire whomever they choose.
• The freedom to not be brutalized by the police.
• The freedom to not be arrested for victimless crimes.
• The freedom to sell raw milk.
• The freedom to not have one’s child subject to unnecessary vaccinations.
• The freedom to not have one’s child unjustly taken by Child Protective Services.
• The freedom to not be subject to the Patriot Act.
• The freedom for kids to set up neighborhood lemonade stands.
• The freedom to not have every facet of business and society regulated.
• The freedom to stay in one’s home during a hurricane.
• The freedom to not have our e-mail and phone conversations monitored.
• The freedom to travel to and trade with any country.
• The freedom to be left alone.

Certainly there are hundreds of things that could be added. We no longer live in a free country. We are increasingly living in a police state, a warfare state, and a national security state. Our freedom is not absolute. The only reason the United States is still considered "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is because we are relatively free, with the degree of freedom varying depending on which country America is compared to.

Would I rather live somewhere else? No, I wouldn’t, but that is a ridiculous question. First of all, if the typical German, Italian, Swede, Korean, Australian, or Spaniard were asked if he would rather live somewhere else you would probably get the same answer. And second, although a prisoner would rather live in a clean prison than a dirty prison and a safe prison rather than a violent prison, he would prefer to not be a prisoner in the first place.

I conclude with three brief thoughts. One, I want the military to defend our freedoms. But fighting foreign wars only reduces our freedoms. After all, it is still true that war is the health of the state. Two, if the military is going to defend our freedoms, then we need freedoms to defend. Our freedoms must be restored before the military can defend them. And three, the greatest threat to our freedoms is the U.S. government, not the governments of China, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, or Iran.

Originally published at LewRockwell.com on September 6, 2011.

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Freedoms I Wish the Military Were Defending

The Economic Argument
Arguments against immigration on economic grounds basically boil down to “They took our jobs!”. Some feel that allowing people to freely cross borders will result in a flood of low-wage labor that will “steal” jobs from natural born citizens. Labor is a factor of production, just like raw materials or financial capital. Restricting the flow of capital and labor will always decrease economic prosperity. Access to more resources – human or otherwise – always increases wealth and opportunity. If this does not make sense to you, I recommend Frederic Bastiat’s “What is Seen and What is Unseen”, chapter 7, as well as his brilliantly satirical “Candle Maker’s Petition.”

The Culture Argument
Others argue that immigration must be restricted in order to protect the nation’s unique cultural heritage. I submit to you that any culture which must be maintained by force is not an authentic culture and is probably a bad one. Cultures freely arise because they provide benefits to those who participate in them. Cultures are always changing. Getting government in the business of protecting culture is dangerous and counter-productive. First, who gets to define what constitutes culture? Bureaucrats don’t have the best track record in such matters. Second, do we really want to live in a culture that is forced upon us by government prohibitions, restrictions and mandates?

The Welfare Argument
Advocates of limited government sometimes argue against immigration on the grounds that immigrants make use of the welfare state and increase the cost of government. State-sponsored welfare programs are a problem. Stopping immigration because immigrants might use welfare programs treats one tiny symptom, not the disease itself. If you routinely dumped garbage on your front lawn and found critters frequenting your property, would you try to ban critters or would you clean the up the garbage? Though I think the vast majority of immigrants immigrate for jobs, freedom and opportunity, I’m sure some come and make use of government handouts (though far less than U.S. Citizens, and on average less than they pay in taxes). The handouts are an attractive nuisance and should be addressed on their own merits, not by attempting to ban the free movement of people.

The Safety Argument
Some argue that allowing easy immigration will bring bands of criminals into their country and make them less safe. First, if something is a crime it is already, by definition, illegal. Threats to life and property are already protected against via the existing police/military operations. Putting up a wall and stopping anyone from crossing it on the grounds that some of them may be criminals is ludicrous. By this logic, governments should perpetually engage in random home searches because they might discover criminal activity. Closed borders probably don’t stop criminals, but let’s pretend that they could; if we could keep foreign criminals out by keeping out anyone foreign, what would we gain? We’d have spent tons of resources keeping out foreigners, most of whom aren’t criminals, and we’d have that much less to use fighting domestic crime. Banning people from movement because some of them may be criminals is even dumber than banning gun ownership because some people may use them for crime. I trust LCC readers to see the many problems with preemptive Minority Report style crime fighting.

The Right Argument
Freedom to immigrate can be defended from several angles, but I believe the most important argument is based on rights. Imagine you and I have pieces of property that share a border. You wish to traverse my property and I wish to let you, but lawmakers prohibit it. What business do they have dictating whether we can make decisions about our own property? Sure, they were democratically elected, but what business do others have of voting to determine how you and I peacefully use our property?

What if government issued a decree that business owners were prohibited from hiring anyone born on a Tuesday? It’s no different when they prohibit hiring anyone born in another country. Shouldn’t the business owner be free to hire whom he wishes? If an individual wishes to travel, work, buy, or sell peacefully and all other parties involved agree, why should government prohibit it?

When you think up other arguments against immigration, ask yourself why they should not also be applied in state to state immigration? City to city? Home to home?

At bottom I think much anti-immigration sentiment comes from a fear of people unlike us. I support anyone’s right to be prejudiced, or to associate only with those of like culture. But putting that attitude into public policy not only hampers wealth and progress, it violates my right to associate peacefully with whom I choose.

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Bad Arguments Against Immigration

I personally love Milton.  Paradise Lost is one of the most beautiful things in the English language.  But Milton was more than a mere poet.  He weighed in on some very controversial political matters of his day, including a riveting defense of free speech in opposition to censorship.  His arguments on this issue were made more famous by John Stuart Mill who essentially restated them in his essay On Liberty.

I have a paper on Milton’s Areopagitica in Libertarian Papers for anyone interested.

Abstract: This article draws general economic arguments against central planning, state licensure and regulation from Milton’s Areopagitica, a 17th Century pamphlet on free-speech. Though Milton’s work was written primarily as a defense for moral man and a warning against religious encroachment by government it provides some of the best and most foundational general arguments, both moral and practical, against government intervention in any field. Milton’s accessible and persuasive style and his ability to combine practical and moral arguments made his work a monumental case against censorship. However, the work has more to offer than a defense of free-speech. Libertarian economists can find in Milton many compelling arguments against central planning, licensure and regulation which have been and should continue to be reiterated.

Check it out.

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John Milton and Freedom

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” Lev. 19:15

It doesn’t take much time to notice that the world is much darker than what God created it to be. Our world today is a far cry from Eden, a place of peace—often described as shalom in the Hebrew Scriptures—where humans walked with God and knew God intimately. From the beggar on the street to the rich man with no love in his life, the shalom of God often feels distant. There is poverty, hunger, slavery, and oppression all over the world.

The Scriptures reveal to us God’s plan to restore shalom. When Jesus enters the story, he reveals “the kingdom of God,” a peaceful kingdom that stands in contrast to the violent kingdoms of this world. Jesus’ own actions were peaceful and non-aggressive. He personally served the poor, left his own family to serve the needs of others, and made company with the outcasts at his own social and cosmic expense. He called on others to voluntarily sacrifice their lives and follow him. His followers were expected to be beacons of light throughout the world, shining love and peace wherever they went.

As followers of Jesus today, we must address the lack of peace and justice in the world with Jesus as our model. Our task is to seek peace, restore brokenness, and bring to justice those who trample on others. Our calling is to also enroll others to join in this endeavor. Yet with all things involving human beings, there are limits to what we can do with and to others. If we are to engage the world, Christians must ask a very critical question: what boundaries are there to seeking justice?

In order to answer this question appropriately we must deal with the imbalance of power in society. Injustice stems from abuses of power. Libertarians and Christians believe that no human has the right to exercise power over another human by means of force or coercion. In order to truly achieve justice, individual freedom must be promoted. Justice itself hinges on the freedom of individuals to exercise their respective wills. Denying this freedom not only tramples human dignity, it pushes justice farther away.

So then, what should the Christian’s attitude be toward the State’s role in the fight for justice? A consistent ethic of peace would have us exercise the power of government only to punish those who have offended the natural right of freedom. Outside of this we have no right to impose our will upon another. If each person is God’s image-bearer with unsurpassable worth, we are duty-bound to not trample upon them, whether on our own or by leveraging the State to suit our preferences. Leo Tolstoy believed that “Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.” Christians should resist looking to the State for power to fulfill the mandates of the gospel.

Those who partner with the State in order to achieve a measure of justice have an impoverished imagination. Instead of advancing the kingdom of God peacefully, they seek to restore justice by controlling the rights and property of others. If it is truly the vocation, calling, and responsibility of the people of God to not only live out but carry out God’s justice, why would we want to delegate that responsibility to an entity whose primary mechanism of operation is threat of force? Christians must think long and hard about how they regard the State.

The Kingdom of God is about greatness through servanthood, loving by sacrificing. Changing the world is not done with might or power but through love and sacrifice. This is why we ought to reject government-centered solutions to social justice.

Christians have succumbed too often to the temptation of power, believing that if we are on God’s side, our power over others is justified. It is time that Christians embrace the Kingdom of the Cross (driven by servanthood, sacrifice, and love) and abandon the Kingdom of the Sword (driven by force, violence, and coercion). The power of the gospel to change the world is not made manifest through violence but through the freedom to love and serve others.

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Justice, Power, and Boundaries

Status quo is a Latin phrase meaning, in a modern translation, “the mess we are in.” A great number of our contemporaries must understand it so, because never have so many persons and organizations come forward with such a variety of schemes for reforming other people and saving the world. This is the age of the Man with the Plan. The reformer, with his blueprints for social uplift, is in his heyday. I suppose that I too would be classified by some as a reformer, for I travel around the country making speeches and taking part in seminars. And the gist of what I have to say is that, indeed, things are in bad shape, but that they might be improved if we approached economic and political issues with more sense and in a different spirit. If the distinguishing mark of a reformer is his yen to save the world, then I am not a reformer. But I live close enough to the tribe so that many of them send me their literature.

Across my desk come the outpourings of many earnest souls, offering salvation to the world if only the world will embrace their particular panacea. The panaceas peddled by these folk come in all sizes and styles, ranging from world government to a low cholesterol diet. In between are the socialists, the land reformers, the money reformers, the prohibitionists, the vegetarians, and those who believe that the world is in the strangling clutch of a far-flung conspiracy of sinister men who operate anonymously behind the scenes. As I read this material I am thankful that the world has so far refused to let itself be saved on the terms each and every one of these reformers lay down. These people differ wildly among themselves as to the details and precise nature of the remedy, but they are in basic agreement as to the general pattern reform should take. Reform—as they understand it—consists of A and B putting their heads together and deciding what C should be forced to do for D. William Graham Sumner of Yale, said something like this about a century ago.

Sumner was describing and deploring a tendency he perceived in the governmental policies of his day to expand the network of governmental interventions and regulations over society in the interests—allegedly—of upgrading the general welfare. This could not be done, he argued, except to the detriment of the productive part of the nation whose interests were to be sacrificed for the assumed benefit of selected individuals and groups. The A and B who put their heads together symbolized government, the public power. D symbolized those who got government handouts and subsidies of various kinds. C symbolized the great body of the nation, the men and women engaged in productive work, whose taxes supported not only the government but the vast and growing number of people, rich and poor alike, who fattened at the public trough. Sumner called C “the forgotten man” because he was the victim sacrificed whenever the public power was misused to confer private advantage. It is intriguing to note that when the New Deal resurrected Sumner’s phrase the meaning was inverted. D, the new class with access to public funds, was now “the forgotten man.”

“The New Freedom”

The thing which Sumner saw taking root a hundred years ago has come to full flowering in the totalitarian states of this century. But the seeds of today’s Democratic Despotism were planted as far back as the 18th century when certain Continental philosophers decided that man had now come of age and could take charge of his own affairs. When you translate this idea from the French it reads: We enlightened few to whom the new truth has been revealed, will take charge of all the rest of you. The kings have been deposed and we represent The People. Combine majoritarian political processes with the powers conferred by science to control both nature and man, they said, and we will hatch a perfected humanity and manufacture a kingdom of heaven on earth. The age-old utopian dream will be a reality; it will be called “The New Freedom”!

Bring this ideology down to the middle of the 19th century and we come to the man from whom so many 20th-century problems stem—Karl Marx. The determining factor for mankind, Marx wrote, is “the mode of production in material life.” A man’s very consciousness is determined by his social existence. “Men’s ideas,” he added, “are the most direct emanation of their material state.” The logic of this is fantastic, for according to Marx’s own statement, he himself is a mere mouthpiece for the material productive forces of 1859; Marx’s mouth may frame the words, but his mind does not generate the ideas. The ideas come from “the mode of production in material life.”

Salvation by Politics

Marx does not stop here; he goes on to fashion an idol. Declaring himself an atheist, he excoriates those who do not “recognize as the highest divinity the human self-consciousness itself.” This new mortal god has only one obligation to the world: Save it! Aristotle’s god, the Prime Mover, derived esthetic enjoyment from contemplating the world He had made; and many philosophers, and ordinary folk as well, have enjoyed the starry heavens and the glories of nature. But if Marx were to have his way, these kinds of pleasures would be prohibited. “The philoso phers have only interpreted the world in various ways,” he wrote: “the point, however, is to change it.” (1845) A contemporary of ours, the late Bertram Wolfe, writing critically of Marxism, gives us this interpretation: “History was to be given a new meaning, a new goal, and a new end in Time . . . . At last man would become as God, master of his own destiny, maker of his own future, conscious architect of his own world.” Salvation by politics!

Utopians, dreaming of an earthly paradise, have drawn up their blueprints of a heaven on earth, but in practice, every attempt to realize a perfect society has resulted in an intolerable society. Newfangled heavens on earth—as exemplified by the totalitarian nations—resemble nothing so much as visions of the old-fashioned hell. Nations began to walk the road to serfdom and the new slavery was inevitable. Meanwhile, another set of ideas was germinating.

The Rule of Law

Human beings have long aspired to be free. But it was only two centuries ago that this aspiration took concrete form in the philosophy of political liberty under the Rule of Law, with its economic corollary, the free market. America announced its ideal of political liberty to the world in The Declaration of Independence. The year was 1776. The Declaration states that men and women are given certain rights and immunities by their Creator, among them the right of every person to live his life peacefully, plus the right to freely exercise the energy that being alive confers—our rights to life and liberty. When a person is free to exercise his energies—which is to say, when he is free to work—he produces goods and services, and these rightfully belong to him. A person’s right to property follows logically from his rights to life and liberty, and private property is the cornerstone of a society of free people.

The economic complement to the political structure envisioned in the Declaration is Adam Smith’s monumental work, The Wealth of Nations. Smith demonstrated once and for all that the business, industry and trade of a nation does not need to be planned and managed by the political authority. Jefferson paraphrased Smith’s idea when he wrote: “If the government should tell us when to sow and when to reap we should all lack bread.” The uniquely American political philosophy of the Declaration said, in effect, that government should not run people’s lives; government’s proper role is similar to that of an umpire. The umpire on a baseball diamond does not operate the game, manipulating the players as if they were pieces on a chess board. The umpire’s job is to be an impartial arbiter of the rules upon which baseball functions, interpreting and enforcing them as needed.

And so it is with the government of a free society. The people manage their own affairs according to the set of rules for living together in society, and the full time job of government is to ensure that the rules are obeyed. This is called the Rule of Law, referred to by Smith as the “liberal plan of liberty, equality, and justice.” Smith showed that a society with equal justice under the law provides optimum liberty for the citizens, and that these same citizens in their capacity as consumers direct and regulate economic production by purchasing this and not pur chasing that. Entrepreneurs analyze this data and produce whatever goods they think the customers will buy. This is capitalism, economic freedom in the marketplace, and it is the other side of the coin of political liberty. Neither can survive without the other.

Regulated by Consumers

Adam Smith did not advance the idea of an unregulated economy; no one believes in an unregulated economy. Capitalism is an economy regulated by the customers; it is consumer sovereignty exercised within the guidelines laid down by the moral law. A free society presupposes that each person is responsible for the way he lives his life; it presupposes that most people most of the time will not murder or assault or steal; most of the time they will tell the truth, fulfill their contracts, and treat their fellows decently. No kind of a society is possible among creatures who habitually violate these moral laws, and a free society presupposes high grade human material. If you have good people—defining “goodness” to include a modicum of intelligence—a good society follows. If men and women pursue the excellence appropriate to our species, choosing such exemplars as Jefferson’s “aristocracy of virtue and talent,” they will have a good society to match.

The original proponents of political liberty and a free economy called themselves Whigs in the 18th century-men like Jefferson and Madison in this country, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith in England. Their followers began to call themselves Liberals when England’s Whig Party changed its name to The Liberal Party in 1832. But the meaning of the word “liberal” began to change even before the turn of the century, and it now means centralized government and a good deal of economic planning—just the opposite of the thrust of early Whiggism and Classical Liberalism. We who believe in the free society cannot now call ourselves Liberals, although early liberalism is in our heritage, so I have taken to calling myself a Whig, after F. A. Hayek who once said, “Call me an old-fashioned Whig, with emphasis on the old-fashioned.”

Freedom of the Press

Whiggery fought some important battles in its time and gained some well-earned victories for several specific freedoms we tend to take for granted. For example, it brought the press out from under the political umbrella, freeing it from interference by a government censor empowered to tell editors and writers what to print and what to spike. There’s a lot of hogwash written about “freedom of the press” these days, but that’s another story!

A corollary of the free press is freedom of speech. This means that people are free to speak their minds and criticize the authorities without risking jail; free speech is an essential element of any society where people elect public officials. The departure of the kings introduced the electoral process as a means of choosing personnel for public office. And when citizens must select public officials by balloting, it is necessary that the issues be ventilated by written and oral debate—which must be free.

The third major freedom worked out by the Whigs was religious liberty. A free society has no official, established church supported out of the tax fund. Churches are supported by voluntary contributions, and there are no laws to punish heresy. The nearest thing to an established church in America is the public school system; but despite that, and despite the enormous quantities of tax money now being siphoned into colleges and universities, we still give a lot of lip service to the idea of academic freedom.

Academic freedom is a good idea, although the ways we now translate that idea into action are open to serious question. Freedom of the press is also a good idea, even though some journalists understand it to mean unlimited license to distort reporting into conformity with their ideological biases. “Separation of church and state” has become my least favorite American shibboleth, but I am nevertheless a devout believer in religious liberty. However critical I am of much that now goes on in these sectors of our life I know that condi tions are much worse when the government operates the schools, the churches and the press—which is the theory and the practice of collectivist nations.

Let People Alone

In Whig theory, government should let people alone; government should not dragoon people into carrying out some vast national purpose; it should not override their personal plans in favor of some grandiose national plan. So long as John Doe is minding his own business, pursuing whatever peaceful goals he has in mind for himself, government should let him alone. But whenever John Doe’s life, liberty or property is violated by any person, government should be alert to detect the crime and punish the perpetrator. The use of lawful force against criminals to protect the peaceful and productive members of society is the earmark of good law. “The end of government is justice,” wrote Madison, “and justice is the end of civil society.” Establish rules of the game designed to secure fair play for everyone, while providing maximum liberty for each man and woman to pursue personal goals. Get government out of its activist role. Limit the law to enforcing the rules against those who violate them—and the free society is the result.

Letting things alone is not the same as doing nothing; letting things alone is an acquired skill. The journal with which I am associated is called The Freeman. Between 1920 and 1924, the editor of The Freeman was a unique personality named Albert Jay Nock. Associated with Nock was a group of young writers such as Suzanne LaFollette, Van Wyck Brooks, and Lewis Mumford. Some-one—reflecting on those four years—remarked to Nock, “Albert, you’ve done wonderful things for these young people.”

“Nonsense,” said Nock, “all I’ve done was to let them alone.”

“True,” replied his friend, “but it would have been different if someone else had been letting them alone.”

Wise and Salutary Neglect

Rightfully letting things alone, in statecraft, is Edmund Burke’s policy of”a wise and salutary neglect.” But let me turn to medicine for a good analogy of the nature of government action proper to the free society. Certain medical theorists of about a century ago—especially in Germany—examined the human organism and found it a crude contrivance of pipes, tubes, levers and dead weight. This botched mechanism could be kept going only if someone constantly patched and repaired it. Writing of this antiquated medical theory, an historian says: “This held that the body was a faulty machine and Nature a blind worker. The student made an inventory of the body’s contents and found, as he expected, some out of place, some wearing out, some clumsy makeshifts . . . some mischievous survivals left over.” Medical practice, based on this theory, was to interfere with the body’s working by probing, operating, removing and altering. The practice sometimes proved disastrous to the patient!

Medical theory has changed. Modern theory, according to the same historian, regards the body as “a single unit, health a general condition natural to the organism . . . and the best diet and regime, to live naturally.” This theory regards the body as a self-regulating, and for the most part, a self-curative organism. It need not be interfered with except to repair or remove any obstruction that prevents the free flow of the healing power of nature. This is an ancient idea, as witness the Latin phrase vis medicatrix naturae. Medical or surgical ministrations do not create health; the body does that of itself, if let alone.

The new outlook in medicine is summed up by the title of the famous book by Harvard professor Walter B. Cannon: The Wisdom of the Body. I believe it was Dr. Cannon who introduced the concept of “homeostasis,” the idea that the human body maintains all the balances necessary to preserve health—unless something interferes. In which case, call the doctor!

Health and Freedom

There is a striking parallel between present day theories of health and the ideal of freedom in human affairs. The believer in freedom is one who has come to realize that society is a delicately articulated thing, each part depending on every other. Hence, arbitrary interference with anyone’s peaceable willed action not only diminishes the freedom of the person restrained but affects all other persons in society. The attempt to masterplan society upsets the balance which every part of society naturally has with every other part, because every unit of society is an autonomous, initiating, reasoning, responsible human being.

Nearly everyone favors freedom in the abstract. Most intellectuals champion freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of the press, and freedom of worship; they distrust economic freedom. Those who would deny freedom in the marketplace assume that, in the absence of political controls over production, economic life would be chaotic. The assumption, in other words, is that manufacturers would not produce the goods consumers want unless government stepped in and told them what to make, and in what sizes, styles, and colors. The assumption is absurd; and so is the belief that the free economy rewards some at the expense of others. Everyone in the free economy is rewarded by his peers according to their evaluation of the worth of his goods and/or services to them.

The Problem Is Scarcity

Why is there economics? What is the problem that calls forth this discipline? The problem, in one word, is “scarcity.” Virtually everything men and women want, need, or desire is in short supply. On the human side of the economic equation is a creature of insatiable needs and desires. On the other side of this equation is the world of raw materials and energy, which are scarce relative to human demands for them. Unlimited wants on one side of the equation, but only limited means for satisfying them on the other. The equation will never come out right. Human wants always outrun the means for satisfying them. Economics, in the nature of the case, is “an anti- utopian, anti-ideological, disillusioning science,” as the late Wilhelm Roepke used to point out.

For a thing to qualify as an economic good, two requirements must be met: the item must be needed or wanted, and secondly, it must be in short supply. Air, despite the fact that it is necessary to our lives, is not an economic good, for it is not in short supply; under normal condi tions there is enough air for everyone with lots left over. But conditioned air is an economic good, even though it is not necessary for life but only ministers to our comfort. Conditioned air is scarce, there is not as much of it as people want, merely for the taking; so people have to give up something in exchange in order to get it. Aside from fresh air, virtually everything we want or need is an economic good; there is not enough of anything for everyone to have all he wants merely for the taking. Some frustration is therefore inevitable; frustration is built into the human situation and we have to learn to live with it. All that economics can promise is a means for making the best of an awkward situation.

Economics, then, is the discipline which deals with goods in short supply—just about everything we want—and the problem it faces is how to allocate scarce goods so as to best satisfy the most urgent human wants, in the order of their urgency. The free market approach to this problem is to rely on the individual free choice of consumers, as manifested in their buying habits. The buying habits of people form a pattern which tells entrepreneurs what to produce, and in what quantities, sizes, and so on. This is the tactic of liberty as applied to the workaday world; this is the market economy, or the price system, and if government merely protects people in their productive activities, and in their buying and selling—protects them by curbing predation and fraud the economic activities of man are self-starting, and self-regulating.

Market Performance

The free market is the only device available for allocating scarce resources equitably. The market’s performance is so efficient and so intelligent that it has excited the admiration of those who have studied and understood its workings. Virtually every one of the charges that has ever been directed against the free economy proves, upon examination, to be aimed at a problem caused by some misguided political interference with the free economy.

No one likes the term Socialized Medicine but there are many people—including some doctors—who support things like Medicare. The professed aim of Medicare is to increase the availability of medical and surgical services by political interventions and subsidies. Now medical and surgical services are in short supply, relative to the demand for them. This is to say that medical and surgical services are economic goods, and—like all economic goods—they are scarce relative to demand. Therefore, a way must be found to ration them.

The free market is the only efficient and fair way to allocate scarce goods, and it follows that only the free market can be relied upon to furnish the greatest quantity of high grade medical and surgical services at the lowest possible price, to a citizenry which has a great variety of other needs and desires to satisfy as well. Every political alternative to the market means a wastage of economic goods and resources; it means less for all. This law applies to medical and surgical services. Socialized Medicine must inevitably lead to a misallocation of available medical resources, with fewer available benefits for those who need them.

The Better Alternative

There are no perfect solutions in human affairs; there are only better or worse alternatives. The private practice of medicine does not promise perfection, any more than the private practice of education, or the private practice of religion, or the private practice of anything you’d care to mention. But private practice surely beats the alternative, which is to have the politicians and bureaucrats run the show. In that direction lies disaster!

Nineteenth-century collectivist theories resulted in twentieth-century totalitarian politics, with its record of slaughter, conquest, poverty, fear, terror, regimentation, and the Gulag. Ideas have consequences; the consequence of bad ideas is monstrous evil on a vast scale. But ideas are changing. Former left wing intellectuals are now neo-conservatives. Some even admit to being conservatives—a conservative being defined by Mike Novak as a liberal who has been mugged by reality! I’m not going to assert that we’ve turned the corner, but we have made progress and the corner is within sight.

Universal Order

This is a universe we live in, not a multiverse or a chaos. Old Mother Nature has a passion for order; she will tolerate disorder up to a point—then watch out! For thousands of years we have known what we ought to do in the moral and spiritual dimensions of our lives, but we find it difficult to perform as we should at this level. Man likes to think that he can “get away” with things, and so he ignores or defies that Purpose which manifests itself in and through the universe. The universe tolerates wayward man up to a point, but if man does not learn his lessons from his own waywardness he will be taught the hard way. “Things won’t be mismanaged long,” said Emerson. Nature will not allow it.

Victor Hugo in his great novel Les Miserables put the matter more dramatically. You recall his long description of the Battle of Waterloo and the defeat of the French. And then these words at the end of chapter 53: “Why Napoleon’s Waterloo?” Hugo asks. “Was it possible that Napoleon should gain this battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No; because of God! Bonaparte victor at Waterloo—that was no longer according to the law of the 19th century. Another series of events was preparing wherein Napoleon had no further place . . . Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his downfall was resolved. He bothered God. Waterloo is not a battle; it is the universe changing front.”

And so I say, Let’s not try to save the world! Saving the world is God’s job; our job—yours and mine—is to live in the world up to the level of our best insights. That might make the world worth saving!

Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

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To Save the World

When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.” Luke 19:41–42

As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to shouts of, “Hosanna” and cloaks and palm branches thrown on the road before him, it seems it must have been a joyful experience. But instead of taking joy in the cheers of the people, Jesus wept over the city.

I’m no Biblical scholar or Jewish historian, but what little I’ve studied of the Bible and the history of the time suggests that the kind of savior the people expected was not the kind Jesus came to be.  And for their misplaced hopes, he felt pain.

When Jesus came into the city that day the people gathered to see him and many began to think he may be the Messiah that had been promised the Jews for hundreds of years. They were under the control of the Roman Empire and its various local puppet governments. Understandably, when the Jews learned the promises of a savior and King in the line of their great king David, they expected a Messiah who would free them from Roman rule.

When Jesus entered the city they waved Palm Branches and shouted, “Hosanna.” History suggests these were significant, even dangerous political gestures. Hosanna was a Hebrew word that meant, “Save, now!” and had a very physical connotation. It was not at that time a cry of spiritual or abstract salvation, but a very real shout for physical salvation, which had specific meaning to a people under Roman rule. The Palm branch was a nationalistic symbol for the Jews, a symbol that had appeared on the last coins made when Israel was free. That is perhaps why the Pharisees told Jesus to “rebuke” his disciples – because to openly praise one they thought came to defy their rulers was politically dangerous.

As the crowd of people saw Jesus entering the city, they saw a political savior; one who might at last rise up and free them from the Romans, and they cheered His arrival. But He wept. He wept because they did not know, “The things which make for peace.” He had not come to free them from physical bondage.

Jesus did not intend to be a political figure. He seemed to largely ignore the Romans, and even saved His criticisms and rebukes not for the political leaders, but for the leaders of His own people; their spiritual leaders. When He taught righteousness it was never backed by force. When He told the rich man to give all he had to the poor the man walked away; Jesus did not force him to obey, but instead let him go. He refused to use earthly law to punish a prostitute by stoning; instead he told her, “Go and sin no more,” and left her free to decide. He did not come to spread his Kingdom with the tools of earthly kingdoms – force and coercion. He did not come to offer political freedom. He came to offer freedom from something much deeper.

To conflate the work of Christ with the work of worldly politics is to miss the meaning of His life, death, and resurrection. To claim that a Christian must vote for a specific policy or politician, that Christians must use government to enforce our morals – to prohibit bad behavior or to force good behavior – is to reduce the work of Christ to the work of a politician. He is not too weak or insignificant for political battles; political battles are too weak and insignificant for Him. The kind of freedom and righteousness He offers is far too great, too personal, to be advanced by physical force (which all politics boils down to); politics is beneath the spiritual life, not above it.

There is a place for politics. Physical freedom is a worthy goal. Defending oneself from violence and oppression is not immoral. Involvement in the political process to these ends is not wrong. But as a Christian, to use government as more than a defense for physical freedom, to enforce the morality you believe in through law backed up by the agents of the state is to contradict Christ Himself.

It is that desire to look to Christ as a way to accomplish our political goals that made Him weep as He entered Jerusalem. They looked for peace through a political savior; He knew the peace He brought was much deeper and could be had regardless of the physical conditions around them. Politics is force. Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem that day had been prophesied by Zechariah, who described Him as, “Gentle.”

Let us emulate Him when we enter the realm of politics. Let us never forget that the freedom He brings transcends this world, and His peace cannot be attained or spread by force.

Missed Part 1? Read it here.

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Jesus, Politics, and You

Man’s work, when people are free, takes form as the market economy; and the free economy generates the material support the human spirit needs for its intellectual and aesthetic fulfillment.

Economic liberty makes for a broadly shared prosperity which provides the wealth a people need to build schools, churches and factories; hospitals and laboratories; theaters, concert halls, art galleries and museums; gardens, playing fields, and stadiums.

These cultural artifacts reflect the several facets of human nature striving for full and harmonious realization; they are the fruits of freedom. Only tend to the roots, and these miracles — and more — are possible.”

Edmund A. Opitz, from The Freeman, June 1988.

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Ed Opitz shows us the Way of Freedom

Can we hope to explain the blessings of freedom to foreign people while we deny them the freedom to cross our boundaries?

Freedom of movement underlies the concept of private property rights. A person has the right to exclusive possession and use of that which he has assembled and improved without trespass against others—the right to the product of his own labor. Any move of a man might be deemed proper and beneficial when he acts to assemble, transport, or otherwise convert the free gifts of Nature so that they may satisfy human needs more readily. This involves no infringement on the equal right of others. It would seem to be the kind of movement that should not be discouraged by man or by government.

On the other hand, freedom of movement may lead to trespass. A person may move or act in such a way as to threaten the life, or to seize or damage the property, of someone else. His apparent personal gain would be at the direct expense of another person. Surely, government should lend no encouragement to such harmful actions or threats of harm by individuals.

The problem of society, then, is to permit and encourage individuals to move and act in a productive and beneficial manner, and to avoid harmful intervention or trespass. The founding fathers wisely depended upon voluntary exchange—freedom of trade in the competitive market place—as the automatic, non-governmental guide to productivity and progress among men. They delegated to government the power to restrict only those actions of individuals designed to circumvent the free market through fraud, deceit, or coercion. The penalty for violation was restitution for damages, or imprisonment, or some other restraint upon that person’s freedom to act or move.

The freedom of the individual to move toward greener pastures, wherever they may seem to be, has been a vital part of the freedom of commerce—the freedom of choice that has constituted the truly distinctive characteristic of “the American way.”

In view of our long experience of near-perfect freedom to move about as each might choose, some of us may not realize the limitations that confront people in many other parts of the world who might like to move toward something better. Many who might choose to enter the United States, peacefully observing our laws and paying their own way, are denied entry. Our community slogans now seem to read: “Welcome to all peaceful and productive newcomers—except foreigners.” And a foreigner here is an individual who has crossed a special political line, supposedly which bounds “the land of the free”!

If it is sound to erect a barrier along our national boundary lines, against those who see greater opportunities here than in their native lands, why should we not erect similar barriers between states and localities within our nation? Why should a low-paid worker—“obviously ignorant, and probably a Socialist”—be allowed to migrate from a failing buggy shop in Massachusetts to the expanding automobile shops of Detroit? According to the common attitude toward immigrants, he would compete with native Detroiters for food and clothing and housing. He might be willing to work for less than the prevailing wage rate in Detroit, “upsetting the labor market” there. His wife and children might “contaminate” the local sewing circles and playgrounds with foreign ways and ideas. Anyhow, he was a native of Massachusetts, and therefore that state should bear the full “responsibility for his welfare.”

Those are matters we might ponder, but our honest answer to all of them is reflected in our actions—we’d rather ride in automobiles than in buggies. It would be foolish to try to buy an automobile or anything else in the free market, and at the same time deny any individual an opportunity to help produce those things we want.

Our domestic relationships would be harmed seriously by restraints upon man’s freedom to migrate. But why shouldn’t the same reasoning hold for our foreign relationships?

Fear No. 1: The “melting pot” might fail to assimilate newcomers. This notion has as little merit as the idea that a third-generation Yankee’s digestive tract isn’t capable of assimilating a bunch of carrots grown by a foreign-born Japanese or Italian vegetable gardener. The assimilation of a foreign-born person is accomplished when the immigrant willingly comes to America, paying his own way not only to get here but also after he arrives, and peacefully submitting to the laws and customs of his newly adopted country. Freedom to exchange goods and services voluntarily in the market place is the economic catalyst of the American “melting pot.” Christian-like morality is the social catalyst—and if it has come to be in short supply among native Americans, the blame for that shortage should not be laid upon our immigrants.

Fear No. 2: The “wrong kind” of people might come to America. The danger that “a poorer class” might come from Asia or Africa or Southern and Eastern Europe and contaminate our society, undoubtedly seems real to any person who thinks of himself as a member of a superior class or race. Such a person, like any good disciple of Marx, is assuming the existence of classes and is convinced that he is qualified to judge others and to sort them into these classes.

Perhaps what is feared is the importation of a new idea of the relationship between the individual and his government. If that has been our fear, it very well might have been justified. For America has been rapidly substituting a socialistic State control for the traditional system of private enterprise. But let us not mistake persons for ideas; the ideas are the root of the problem. Migration of persons is not a reliable measure of the flow of ideas.

Fear No. 3: Immigrants might deprive our own workers of jobs and depress the wage scale. The fear that immigrants might take the jobs of American workers is based on the fantasy that the number of jobs to be filled within our economy is strictly limited. Individuals still do—and undoubtedly always will—entertain unsatisfied desires for more and more goods and services, which industrious and ingenious individuals constantly are producing in response to opportunities. If there is freedom to think, to trade, and to move, then opportunities for new, creative jobs are not limited to the wilderness or a spot of idle land.

The fear that heavy immigration of workers would depress the wages of native workers is an outgrowth of socialist doctrine. Socialism is so concerned with consumption and “equitable distribution” that it neglects the source of production. It fails to recognize that there can be more and more to consume only if capital and tools are first produced to give leverage to the productive power of man.

Can we hope to explain the blessings of freedom to foreign people while we deny them the freedom to cross our boundaries? To advertise America as the “land of the free,” and to pose as the world champion of freedom in the contest with communism, is hypocritical, if at the same time we deny the freedom of immigration as well as the freedom of trade. And we may be sure that our neighbors overseas are not blind to this hypocrisy.

A community operating on the competitive basis of the free market will welcome any willing newcomer for his potential productivity, whether he brings capital goods or merely a willingness to work. Capital and labor then attract each other, in a kind of growth that spells healthy progress and prosperity in that community. That principle seems to be well recognized and accepted by those who support the activities of a local chamber of commerce. Why do we not dare risk the same attitude as applied to national immigration policy?

Our collective abandonment of the economic system of the free market leaves for us the controlled communal life, where everyone wants to be a consumer without producing anything.

The Basic Problem

Our immigration policy merely reflects the existence of this serious internal problem in America. Our present policy toward immigrants is consistent with the rest of the controls

over persons which inevitably go with national socialism. But the controlled human relationships within the “welfare state” are not consistent with freedom. Great Britain once thought she could deny freedom to American colonists. And now, her own people have traded their freedom for nationalized austerity. Even a “prosperous” modern America can ill afford traveling that same course. If we do, our community, too, will lose its capacity to attract newcomers. Then we wouldn’t need an immigration policy. But who among us would want to remain in a community where opportunities no longer exist?

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The Freedom to Move

1. Communism Kills
2. Culture
3. Don’t Tread
4. Earth Liberation
5. Enjoy Capitalism!
6. Free Trade Now!
7. Freedom: My Anti-Gov
8. Down with Censorship!
9. Hands Off My Home
10. Homeland Tyranny
11. I Am Not a Number
12. ImmiGreat
13. Politics Hurt
14. Progressives Against Progress
15. Smoking is Healthier Than Fascism
16. Social Slavery
17. Stop Rent-seeking
18. Stop Statism
19. Tax Slavery Sucks
20. Teensploitation
21. Who Owns You?

Share the memes with your friends, these ideas were meant to be free!

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Great Libertarian Memes